<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>this is it, the apocalypse by LorienofLoth</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23163793">this is it, the apocalypse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth'>LorienofLoth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunger Games Series - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Careers Have Issues, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:40:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>727</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23163793</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gloss is twenty-eight years old, and he knows four things as certain as Reaping Day.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this is it, the apocalypse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gloss is twenty-eight years old and he knows four things as certain as Reaping Day:</p>
<p><br/>1) He is the best swordsman in his district. Not just the best swordsman in his year, although he is, and not just the best swordsman of his Games, although he was, his Games ending in a furious one-on-one swordfight with Two’s Eudoxos, who had a foot on him, and more than a stone. No, he is the best swordsman One has produced in many years, beating Dexter and Chantilly, Aria and Blaze, when he realised just how much the odds were in his favour, and they’re brought in to show him the greatness of the One dynasty, stretching back regardless of blood, from Victor to Victor to Victor.</p>
<p><br/>2) His win was not his own. Gloss was the finest swordsman in his district and that’s why he was chosen for the Games over Lux or Kostene, his year-mates and competitors until the end, but he also spent nine years watching the Games, and being watched as he did so, the scrutiny increasing every year as he got closer to the ultimate goal of tribute. He knew how to tell a win—a true Victory, when a competitor had manipulated his competition, or his arena—from those granted by the Gamemakers to appease the Capitol, gifting them their favourite fucktoys as a distraction, or a reward, or just because they knew the Capitol wouldn’t notice its own destruction if a pretty teenager was stood there holding a knife and smiling. Gloss had struggled to the final battle of his Games in the traditional style, hacking through vines which had sucked his blood, and battling his way past a legion of deadly snake mutts. Eudoxos had arrived burnt from his right ear to his left hip, stiff where he wasn’t immobile, although his short sword had still been light in his left hand, and his right had managed to conjure a knife when Gloss had thought him thoroughly beaten. Gloss had watched the tapes. He knew Eudoxos had been in good health—malnourished, and dehydrated, and with a series of bone-deep bruises into his hips and ribs, but in good health nonetheless—when he had set out, upon hearing the penultimate cannon blast, for the final battle of their Games.</p>
<p><br/>3) The third thing Gloss knows, although it is a secret he knows better than to admit—although he would deny it if asked—is that someday he is going to kill again. He doesn’t know who, although sometimes, after nineteen hours awake in Mentor Central he has some idea (his One-pretty sister, vicious and striking and architect of his cage, Odair, a year behind him, laughing with bloodstained teeth as he sliced up Lucien, a year younger than Gloss and twice as vicious—shaking as he and Gloss left the private apartments of the Capitol’s First Minister of Transportation—Lyme, Two as the mountains, solid and enduring and Eudoxus’ mentor), but that doesn’t matter. It’s Mentor Central, they all fantasise about killing each other, although at least in the inner districts they have the decency to pretend they don’t. If sometimes faces embed themselves in Gloss’ mind, well, that’s just because he cares about the Games and his district and his duty. If other faces sometimes flash across his dreams—Ministers and Gamemakers and honoured delegates to the District, may Snow defend him—well, that’s a consequence of his busy nights representing his district in the Capitol, and his endless days teaching sword-tricks to One’s most promising youth. Things merge sometimes. Gloss knows his duty. All the same, he is going to kill someone, he knows, he knows deep in him in the same way he knew when he swung for Four Girl (he knew when he swung for Adriana) that he could break her block, that he could bring his sword back around to slice deep into her chest before she had even moved to defend herself. He knows he is going to kill someone like he knew the same thing at the Cornucopia, with the meat tributes running at him like their lives depended on it.</p>
<p><br/>4) The last thing Gloss knows is that when they call his name for the Quarter Quell—and they will call his name for the Quarter Quell—he knows exactly what he will do.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>look at me, getting attached to Gloss by virtue of his attachment to Finnick (which is entirely in my head), I definitely know what I'm doing</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>